saving image and deployment features

[Brad Fuller]

Lukas Renggli wrote:

>Hi Martial,
>
>  
>
>>I am real interested in seaside/magritte/pier and as a newbie (in  
>>squeak but  not in smalltalk) I would like to do a little Pier/ 
>>seaside website. I chose to run my squeak process in a linux server  
>>with a framebuffer X server to administrate my image with VNC  
>>access (and not by the seaside inspector available with halos). I  
>>did it with a special user (not root) and my firewall connection  
>>configuration permits me to access externally to my webserver on  
>>standard port 80.
>>    
>>
>
>welcome to Seaside/Magritte/Pier ;-)
>
>So far your configuration looks pretty standard for such a setup.
>
>  
>
>>But I am a bit unsecure with a deployment of a "classical" pier
>>configuration. If my machine crash, I lost all my data. So I need  
>>to do
>>backup. I can run a:
>>SmalltalkImage current snapshot: true andQuit: false.
>>but if a user does something on my website, it's rejected. So I read
>>somewhere (maybe thru this mailing-list archive) about a way to do
>>backup. Actually, I would like to save the image everytime it's
>>possible. I heard about the use of:
>>UnixProcess saveImageInBackgroundNicely but I don't know how to use  
>>it.
>>With forkHeadlessSqueakAndDoThenQuit message, it seems to be  
>>possible to
>>save my image in another until I do the permanent and tested weekly
>>backup. So if I crash or there is a glitch, my image or the  
>>periodically
>>save image can be broken but I can restore the most recent backup.
>>If someone can explain me how to do (or find how to do) this, I'll be
>>glad. I don't want to build a wiki/blog like site and lost in a crash
>>all the readers'comments/posts.
>>    
>>
>
>This is what is implemented in PRImagePersistency. If you have  
>OSProcess loaded it will do it nicely in the background, else it will  
>just do a snapshot and block the VM for a few seconds while saving. I  
>am successfully using this method for all my Pier images. Have a look  
>at the implementation, there are a lot of things that you can tweak  
>and change there.
>
>Keith Hodges did a persistency implementation using the object  
>database Magma. This looks very promising and I think this will be  
>the way to go in the future. I am sure he is willing to tell you more  
>about it ...
>
>There are a couple of other persistency strategies floating around,  
>check out the mailing list archive.
>
>  
>
>>I also noticed some errors in the deployment of  
>>squeakfoundation.org. By
>>clicking on 'Edit' or 'Login', there's error. But instead of  
>>permitting
>>me to go back to the previous page with a short error message (and
>>advertising the webadmin) like on the other classic php/jsp website, I
>>go to debug message. It's really bad. I guess that when I click on
>>'Debug' I open a morph Debugger window on the squeak image. It's not
>>what I (and probably the squeakfoundation.org webmaster) want. I am  
>>sure
>>there is a way to shortcut the doesNotUnderstand message in seaside/ 
>>pier
>>so that in a deployment mode, the user has just a friendly error  
>>message
>>and the webmaster received an email from squeak with the debug message
>>infos and the context.
>>    
>>
>
>I am not responsible for this server, but I know the problem: the  
>versions of Pier and Seaside do not match.
>  
>
That was fixed before. I don't know why it doesn't work now.  I'll check 
that out. (though, I'm not really the webmaster of the site.)
But, besides that, the squeakfoundation.org site should not be open to 
the public to edit. I guess the board has not been working on it, 
although they have been told it is available.

brad